Vacant?
by FaustoCosgrove
Summary: Three black eyed demons try their best to not be comic relief. And what's wrong with Cas? This fic is organic, free range, and 100% romance free. Rated T for mild language.
1. Chapter 1

AN: Please read this fic with a grain of salt. You could never spend time with every grain, but for that one you'll have made all the difference and I think that's beautiful.

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Kahnor, Luggad, and Ralph are demons.

Just your average Blackout-eyed, rosy cheeked possessor-types trying to eek out a living in the depths of hell.

Well, they were in the depths of hell until very recently. With Lucifer getting plans into action and causing even more mayhem and strife than usual, this is the right time to make a good impression. So our happy trio pop up to the surface to aid the Master of Evil in any way they can.

Lucifer's current biggest problem is that whenever anyone gets sent up to do anything, the despicable, cunning, resourceful, determined Winchester brothers swoop in and ruin everything. It's like they have the will of God on their side! Well, they have an angel which implies the will of God. Or something. Whatever.

So, what's the best way to wreck havoc up top without attracting attention? Attract even more attention somewhere else! So Kahnor, Luggad, and Ralph are conned into heading up top to be decoys for Lucifer's master plan. There is no intention on Lucifer's part that these three will collect their pensions. Go and get killed, just use enough of the Winchester's time to keep them out of the Grand Poobah of the Underworld's hair for his top secret plan. Not that our beloved villainous trio are aware of the fact.

But Kahnor and Luggad are not completely incompetent. I promise.

I mean, they're demons after all. For all the centuries of torture they've gone through, they're clearly stronger than these pesky humans. Which is exactly what Kahnor and Luggad proved this afternoon by possessing a pair of humans. Kahnor found a scrawny young boy with a baseball cap and too many polo shirts on while Luggard went for the 300-pound biker (complete with his own motorbike). With Ralph securely packed into the left saddle bag, Kahnor hits the gas and the three of them go off in search of some nice little place to conjure up some evil.

Since they managed to slip up top unnoticed, it was better to move to a new location sans-demon magic and not give themselves away immediately. After all, there's these pesky angels interfering much more than they used to, and if they got so much as a whiff of magic they're bound to come swooping in and ruining all of Lucifer's hard work. Creating a pointless spectacle big enough to steal all of heaven's attention in order for Lucifer to do whatever it is he means to do, it's gonna take a wee bit of time and no pesky humans bumbling into the plan.

Somewhere after the highway ends, Kahnor and Luggad found an abandoned farm house (not Ralph, because he was sleeping for the past 84 miles) and decide to set up shop.

~ Meanwhile, the heros(?) of the story ~

The Winchester brothers plus one were making their usual rounds. Sam and Dean were scoping out the local bar for any tidbits about demonic activity, er, well, Sam was doing just that. Making conversation with the local superstitious bumpkin and learning about the local lore. Dean, on the other hand, was failing at flirting and getting tipsy. Cas was left in the car to both keep an eye on any suspicious movements outside and keep out of the bar. Mostly the latter, since nothing good could come of an angel with no concept of normal human behavior and a mess of drunks.

Just as Sam had decided that this town was a dud (since the information spouter himself had gone there and not seen any supernatural activity), a local man who smelled like he started drinking an hour ago waltzed in the door and put his arm around Sam's information dud.

"Dude. I just saw the weirdest fuckin' thing."

"Man, you smell like horse piss! Get off me!"

"You didn't believe me when I saw that lady in the window."

"We checked out the farm house ourselves. There's nothing there."

"I saw titties. Ain't I never mistaken titties before in mah life. But now I saw... heh heh heh..."

"You saw..." Sam tried to egg the guy on. The new guy raised an eyebrow.

"Who's this trouser stain?"

"A fellow spirit chaser."

"So the house is haunted." Sam ignored the insult as best he could.

"Well, s'its got to be ghosts. Or demons. Or aliens. 'cause it don't fit none. Hey, man, you sure we can trust him?"

Sam ordered a round of drinks, and got the entire story, if it could be called that, promptly.

"See, it's the old Johnson place. The kids all moved to the city soon as they could, and the old man's wife died fallin' out the second story windah. He stayed in that house s'as long as he could, and wouldn't talk to nobody. Was all these rumors about him raisin the dead, but that was years ago. Old man himself been dead ten years or so by now. Not much of a local legend, but it's all we gots." The new informant took a swig, while the dud took over.

"Then this fool say he saw some lady up in the windah. Now, kids had been poking around in there since the 'alloween after the old man died. His kin ain't been down to claim the house or nuthin' so the kids used the place as a party house fer a while. Us included. I even gots me an EMF de-terc-ter an' nothin. No waves, no weird things inda cellar, nothin'. Perdy disheartening, since when else you gonna find somethin' cool like this?" the dud paused for a swig, and his friend took over the story again.

"Yeah, an after a while the kids stopped goin' there altogether. Roof fallin' in places, the floor in't stable on the second floor, you know? Ain't nobody hangin' around there, then not a week ago, I see somefin in the windah. You can see the big windah on the second floor from the road, ya see? An I sees something big and bright red, an' it's a blonde lady in a red dress. An' I woulda stopped to check it out, but she was gone as fast as I saw her, plus I wanted to bring this idiot with me-"

"-an he did drag me out there, but by the time we was there it was dark and we couldn't really look around that much. Not that we didn't try. I used the EMF der-terc-ter but nuthin. Didn't sence nuthin' didn't see nuthin'."

Sam's briefing of the Johnson house continued as the new guy began to gush with tales of his newest supernatural encounter.

"So I was goin' past the place again today, and I sees tracks goin' up behind the house. So I park the car down by the road and sneak up to the house. I'm lookin inda windah, see, and there's this big, fat mu****fu**** standin' n there. So big I'm surprised the floor don't cave in. He looks like a hell's angel from the last century. An' with him is this rich-douche looking boy with a stupid hat and 12 shirts on, i swear to Gawd! Like that Jersey Shore t.v. show."

The dud roared with laughter. "Sounds more like a couple'a faggots snuck into an abandoned house so noes ones could see them get their freak on. What else would two completely different looking guys be doin' traveling together like that?"

Sam had a series of flashbacks to every single motel clerk that looked at him and Dean funny when they tried to book a room. The dud continued, "I still think you imagined the lady. It can't be ghosts, since we dunnt find no EMF. Wouldn't be the first time you sees somethin' that ain't there. Like all the girls in highschool who liked you." The dud's friend slugged him in the arm, as a hand gripped Sam's.

"Sammy..." A staggering Dean used Sam as a makeshift cane.

"You're drunk, Dean." Sam's statement was proven correct as Dean slurred a refute, but instead managed to partially collapse onto his brother. Sam saw the dud and his friend exchange glances. He rued Dean's comic timing, and hauled him back to the Impala after thanking the locals for their time. Sam relayed the information to Cas, who volunteered to check it out, and returned momentarily.

"Nothing."

"Thought so. Okay, let's keep going."

"No, I didn't mean no demonic activity. I meant no house. From your description, there should be a house somewhere within 10 miles of this place that has been abandoned, with a caving in roof and unstable second floor. I doubled the radius and found no such house."


	2. Chapter 2

AN: I wrote the first chapter in 2014 and the second in 2016. Remind me in 2018 to post chapter 3, maybe I'll have written it by then T.T

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"How did you find this house?"

"Cas, I followed the directions those guys in the bar gave me. 'It's the first house on the left by the interstate' is what they said, and here it is. I don't know how you could've missed it."

Cas pressed his palm to the molding around the old farm house's door. "This place just feels... like a totally normal dilapidated house."

Sam rolled his eyes. A normal college student would never hear the phrase "a totally normal dilapidated house" in a regular conversation. Chasing small time ghosts where they can barely get a whiff of much less make enough of stink to really deserve being sent to hell, made Sam remember the good old days. Having Dean drunk as a skunk, and just wanting to go charging in didn't help the nostalgic feeling. Neither did having to find the place without Cas's help.

"At any rate, let's get Dean sobered up and come back later. He's not much use now and I can't leave him out in the car. I'd never hear the end of it if I did."

"Sounds good." Cas dragged Dean back into the Impala and waited patiently in the passenger's seat. The nostalgia feeling left Sam completely as he bucked himself into the driver's seat and turned on the motor. For a moment, he thought about letting Dean drive despite his brother's inebriated state, but then Dean mumbled a girl's name and failed spectacularly at taking off his pants in the back seat. Sam decided to get the hell out of Dodge (the driveway) and get Dean into a bed while he could still move.

"Okay 'totally normal dilapidated house', see you in a few hours." Sam gave a quick salute to the building before he shifted into reverse.

"Sam, wait."

The Impala ceased to back out of the driveway.

A short silence followed.

"...what's up, Cas?" Sam asked a touch nervous.

"How did you find this house?"

Sam muttered to himself about Cas loosing his mind as he cut the wheel, turned his brother's precious car around, and drove off to the closest motel.

~ Later that evening ~

A drizzle of rain drove Kahnor, Luggad, and Ralph into the kitchen, the only part of the first floor that would still provide shelter from the rain. Human bodies were a pain in the ass, and the three had just come back from provisioning for the two of them who'd possessed human bodies. Well, Kahnor and Luggad did so, Ralph had only moved from the left saddle bag to an empty kitchen drawer (the one that Luggad logically thought should've contained silverware).

It'd been only a light drizzle, but it was enough to hide the tracks of an Impala that'd been there briefly while the three were away looking for food. It was enough of a drizzle to make the motorcycle's tracks really stand out upon their return. It was enough of a drizzle for Kahnor to demand that they set up shop in the cellar, since it might be dark and they wouldn't be able to see what they were doing or even if they were doing their spells correctly, but at least they'd be dry.

Luggad had finished eating most of the food they'd acquired, Ralph had been moved to the cellar via an old flower vase (with a lovely audio accompaniment by Kahnor whining loudly about Ralph doing something for himself for once), and Kahnor had firmly and triumphantly closed the cellar doors. The bang of the doors shutting alerted the fourth guest in the house to the passage of time, who raised herself from the bathtub on the second floor that had been filled with rainwater from the previous night's drizzle. She examined her pruned fingers with a touch of alarm, then dried off, plucked the no longer dried herbs that remained out of her blonde hair and off of her skin, climbed back into her floor length red dress, and silently descended the stairs to go into the kitchen.

When Kahnor opened the cellar door the following morning, he found that he and Luggad had all but drawn their demon symbols upside down on the walls. The demon aura amplifying spells had been done backward, so they would effectively make themselves appear as very evil carpenter ants to the angels (instead of the three dead ringers for Lord Lucifer himself like they were trying to do Kahnor lamented, loudly). The outdated summoning spell for lesser demons that no one fell for anymore but that the angels certainly knew about was so messy that Ralph could hardy tell what it was supposed to be.

Kahnor was so distraught about their first attempt's failure before it even began, he paid Luggad no mind when he returned to the cellar from the kitchen with the news that the leftover food from last night was gone, as were the food wrappers and the trails of mud from their shoes through out the house. It took Luggad ages to carry Ralph and drag Kahnor into the house so they could observe the changes that appeared overnight.  
Amidst the demon's arguing over the importance of the sudden disappearance of some dirt, the Winchester brothers (now featuring two sober men!) and their pet angel waltzed right in the front door (not literally) without either of the possessing demons noticing. Ralph, however, squirmed uselessly in his vase. Cas was, after all, an angel. Despite this oversight, Kahnor and Luggad's argument continued.

"It's just some dirt. I don't get what the big deal is! We have so, so many other things to worry about right now!" Kahnor shouted up at Luggad who was frantically trying to charades out the idea that dirt shouldn't spontaneously disappear while making little noise other than "Buh buh buh whu whu whu".

Dean tried to make a joke about a happily married couple, but the two demons took no notice. Sam tried to ask the two what a couple of city slickers like themselves were doing there. They were still ignored.

"You three." Cas said in a somber voice, somehow managing to collect the demon's undivided attention.

"How did you find this place?"

Chaos erupted. Sam buried his face in his hands and moaned in helplessness. Dean threw half a dozen profanities at Cas. The demons with bodies answered the question, sort of, with Kahnor's reasoning of "well, we had to stop somewhere, we'd been driving forever" and Luggad's more cryptic response of "It didn't seem like anything was here" despite the fact that there was clearly a building (mostly) all around the odd assortment of characters. In lieu of speaking, Ralph rocked his vase more violently and nearly fell off of the counter top.

"Hello?"

A female voice, somewhat amused and somewhat nervous, floated down from the stairs. The house occupants fell silent as the feet that moved the voice made no sound as she descended the staircase, the swish of fabric against bare wood steps the only sound in the house. About halfway to the ground floor, Sam wagered a guess that this blondie was the same one his information dud had spoken about earlier.

"Ah-ha! Another human!" Kahnor jumped into action, seized Ralph's vase, and threw the helpless demon toward her, as if throwing a bucket of water.

"Oh!" the blonde lady shielded her face from the water assault that never came. Ralph quickly absorbed into her body and Kahnor congratulated Ralph, who now with the ability to speak insisted his name was Mary, on his first possession. Ralph, for his part, was scolding Kahnor for giving him "such a fright" and wondered aloud about the state of "kids these days" while Luggad tried desperately to regain his use of English and insist his colleagues pay attention to the fact that the three biggest pains in Lucifer's derrière were standing no less than 5 feet away from them.

Cas commented about the singular nature of the number of souls in the blonde's body which indicated that she was most definitely not possessed, while Dean failed to intimidate the demons even a little bit with his rock salt shotgun. Sam smacked the side of the EMF detector and complained about batteries, cause the thing was obviously not working 'cause it was always registering Cas no matter how hard he tried to hide' and now there was diddly-squat.

The blonde lady in the red dress had started lecturing Kahnor about throwing things at people's faces and how said jokes were most certainly not funny while advising the group to not play ghost hunters in abandoned buildings. It took Kahnor longer than his companion and the Winchestors to figure out that Ralph was addressing the group as if they were all in this together.

Luggad, who had been the first to notice that Ralph was not Ralph, had begun to call out for Ralph to come out of hiding while opening drawers and peaking behind cupboard doors. Dean was muttering about them not being worth killing and "the three demon stooges" to which no one was listening to appreciate his snark.

Sam was having a relatively normal conversation with Mary, who despite warning against the dangers of exploring an abandoned house had evidently taken up residence since "it seemed like nobody would mind". She had noticed the groups before, and had simply stayed on the second floor either because she was occupied with some other task or else wasn't in the mood to lecture kids. When Sam inquired as to what "other tasks" could be, Mary was sceptic that Sam would be interested in the half a dozen or so herbs she was growing or refining, but when Sam rattled off all the magical properties they had she invited him up to the second floor to see her makeshift greenhouse.

Despite Sam's careful ascent, he still made a lot of racket going up the stairs and walking down the hallway. Since Kahnor and Luggad were still scream-looking for Ralph, Dean and Cas didn't notice. In fact, Cas was still wondering how any of them had found the house and was more of a distraction than the two idiot screaming demons. Somehow in the desperate searching for Ralph and desperate attempts to get the demon's attention, Dean learned that Cas's exorcise-the-demons-by-touch thing wasn't working. This snapped Kahnor back to reality, who tried to do something demonic at Dean, but whatever that was didn't work either. In fact, the group was starting to look like the group of kids playing demons and demon hunters that the totally normal dilapidated house's resident had accused them of being earlier. Dean made a snarky remark about that to Sam, who he only then discovered was not there. Cas and Dean joined Luggad and Kahnor (who had gone back looking for Ralph) in their weird screaming search party.

Meanwhile, on the second floor, Sam was engrossed in the plant life that had exited it's pots and started growing on the floor and in the walls. Mary had shown Sam her rainwater collection system which was half made up of a hole in the roof and half plants growing around the hole which funneled the water to a series of buckets and pots that led to the bathroom. While complementing Mary on her engineering, Sam was finally no longer able to ignore the screaming downstairs anymore. He hollered at his brother through a hole in the bathroom floor to shut up as he could hardly hear himself think, which prompted Dean and Cas to go charging up the staircase.

Dean and Cas were joined by Luggad and Kahnor, who suspected that Ralph was upstairs as well. The staircase was unable to handle Luggad and came away from the wall and collapsed just as Cas cleared the top of the stairs. Uninhibited by the huge crash behind him and still charging down the hallway, Dean's foot sank into the biggest rot spot that Mary had instructed Sam to shimmy around by the wall to avoid and Dean soon found himself half way between the hallway and the living room below. He groaned in pain, and Mary managed to convince Cas to stay put as she and Sam maneuvered their way against the walls to either side of Dean, each grabbing him under the arm and hoisting him out of the newest hole in the house. Since the stairway was no longer an option, Mary asked Kahnor and Luggad to either get the ladder from the kitchen.

Not entirely sure what a ladder is, the two were finally able to understand "pile of soft things" and made a heap of the couch, recliner, and every moldy pillow and rug where the stairs had been. Mary angrily pointed out a rather large bloodstain that was getting larger on Dean's shirt and scolded him for getting himself into such a mess. She instructed Sam and Cas to get him into the kitchen as she turned and went back down the holy hallway. Sam tested the use of the demon's pile'o'soft, found it satisfactory, then climbed halfway back up to help his brother down. Mary reappeared, carrying a bundle of moss and a clay pot, which Sam assumed was to treat Dean's cut. She sniffled, then began sneezing uncontrollably. Dean joked that she'd tear another hole in the house and Sam asked if she had hay fever. Mary apologized profusely, claiming this sort of thing never happens, before giving the loudest, most violent, and final sneeze which was accompanied by what Dean and Sam were horrified to think of as a booger the size of a golf ball ejecting itself from her throat. Cas, unaware of the societal taboo that boogers are, caught the sphere. He then looked down in confusion at the thing he had caught, iridescent and softly glowing white. Unable to see that the object was not a fantastically large booger ball, Dean collapsed in laughter onto Sam on the first floor's pillow pile.

Mary rushed forward, and was terribly angry with the group upon finding the boys screwing around instead of assisting in the medical care that Dean was in need of. She slipped down onto the arm of the couch, insisted Dean stop behaving ridiculously, and with the assistance of Sam and Luggad got Dean into a kitchen chair, his shirt off him, the rotten wood out of his cut, the all-natural antibiotic salve (that was not supported by big-pharma) onto his cut and various other scrapes, and a make-shift bandage tied around his middle (which Mary threatened to continue up to his mouth so maybe he'd stop laughing in such a serious situation).

Cas was still on the second floor, mesmerized by what had turned out to be a pure soul. It did not appear to be a dead soul that happened to be pure, but a soul that had yet to be born into a human body, untouched by the corruption of this world. It was the kind of blank soul that would be placed in an unborn child and was only handled by angels in the Soul Transport Operators and Regulations Committee (or STORCs for short). The most logical thing to do with such a thing was to return it to the STORCs. Which is exactly what Cas did, as he disappeared in a flash.

Wading through Heaven's bureaucratic process takes a short time by human standards, and the 1.7 minutes required wasn't enough for team totally normal dilapidated house to realize Cas was gone. It took 3 times that time for Cas to figure out that he couldn't find his way back. He still had no idea how to find the house.

The desk work angel that had received the pure soul Cas had brought shook his head at his colleague who was having a rough time remembering where he had come from, sent a memo that something was wrong with him to his superior, and tossed the soul into the ball pit of other pure souls.

Ten years later, a couple in Albuquerque wondered about their cute daughter who insisted that her name was Ralph.


End file.
